England Does Not Love Coalitions' - Does Anything Change?

• Author: Charles Garraway
• Position: Visiting Professor at King's College, London and an Associate Fellow of Chatham House
• Pages: 233-244

XI

"England Does Not Love Coalitions"

Does Anything Change?

Charles Garraway*

Mytitle comes from aquote from Benjamin Disraeli, speaking in the House

ofCommons on December 16, 1852.1In 1852, Victoria was on the throne

of England and Abbott Lawrence was the United States Ambassador to the Court

of St. James. Lawrence was born at Groton, Massachusetts, not too far from the

Naval War College, and is the founder of Lawrence, Massachusetts and ofthe Law-

rence Scientific School at Harvard. The British Empire was at its height in 1852 and

on it the sun never set. Livingstone was setting out on his journeys into the African

hinterland. This was two years before the start of the Crimean War; British forces

were fighting in Burma; the Punjab had just been annexed and gold had been dis-

covered in aremote prison colony called Australia. Disraeli was not yet Prime

Minister—that was yet to come. He was Chancellor of the Exchequer—Treasury

Secretary in US terms.

But what did Disraeli mean by "coalition"? Ihave not been able to find an 1852

English dictionary and Itherefore take my definition from my old copy ofthe Con-

cise Oxford Dictionary (which still bears my school particulars in the front cover!).

This reads: "Coalition, n. Union, fusion; (Pol.) temporary combination for special

ends between parties that retain distinctive principles."2

*Visiting Professor at King's College, London and an Associate Fellow of Chatham House.